Rex Stout Read Online Free Page A

naturally ungrateful and he wouldn’t get it even if I did owe it.
But
.” She became savage. “He also knows that he has been perfectly swell to me for over fifteen years, and that I have sense enough to know it, and that I’m fair-minded and tender-hearted. After all, that picture of him … that piece in the Gazette was appalling.”
    Dol Bonner asked drily, “Fair-minded? Fair to me?” But at once she added: “No. I take that back. Fair enough. If I had any complaint, which I haven’t, it would be against myself, for letting you persuade me … as you know, my idea was to go into the detective business alone, in a little room in a cheap building.…”
    Foltz ventured with diffidence, “If I may—it’s none of my affair—but I’ve often wondered—why did you pick the detective business? A girl of your ability—and all the people you know—you could have done anything—”
    “I know, Martin.” Dol sounded patient. “I could have got a job as a stylist, or an executive secretary, or started a hat shop or a shopping service. May I just say I didn’t want to? I could add that I wouldn’t accept any man as a boss, and preferably no woman either, and I made a long list of all the activities I might undertake on my own. They all seemed monotonous or distasteful except two or three, and I flipped a coin to decide between detective and landscape design. I had to swallow my pride to take a favor from one man, to get a license. I had no family, and my father died owing money, and instead of taking a thousand dollars fromSylvia to keep me going a while, I was weak enough to let her come in for all this.” She waved a hand at the handsome room, with its yellow and blue and chrome, then shrugged her shoulders and looked at her erstwhile partner. “It’s all washed up, Sylvia dear? Final?”
    Sylvia looked miserable again. “Oh, Dol …”
    “Okay.” Dol got brisk. “I’m four years older than you, I should have known better.” She opened a drawer and took out a sheet of paper with typewriting on it. “I’m not surprised, and I’m as clever as P. L. Storrs—I like you no less. I got these figures together this morning. You’ve advanced nine thousand dollars of the fifteen thousand contemplated as your capital contribution. It has gone for my salary, office furnishings, payroll, rent—it’s all itemized and I’ll give you a copy. We have—”
    “Dol, stop that!” Sylvia’s face was flushed. “You don’t have to rub it in!”
    “I’m not rubbing it in. I’m reporting as president of the corporation. We have taken in $712.83. We have accounts receivable $949.10, all good, they’ve been slow only because they knew you didn’t need the money. Our bank balance is $1164.35. Our net worth is $7219.88, but the furnishings are in at cost, and of course when we sell them—”
    “Sell them!” Sylvia gasped. “Dol! Sell these lovely—”
    “Certainly sell them. Sylvia dear, you haven’t the faintest idea where money comes from. You still think a stork brings it and drops it down the chimney—only in your case it would take quite a flock of storks. Do you suppose I could support this kind of a shebang? The rent alone is eighteen hundred. I don’t know what will happen about the lease, but when the corporation is dissolved—and there’ll be a lawyer to pay for that—
well!
Get out of here!”
    Foltz and Sylvia looked startled, but saw at once that the dismissal was not for them, but for a newcomer. The door had been flung violently open, and an Olympic champion, not of the dark variety, had crossed the threshold. He was tall, built for use, blue-eyed, and as tanned as a nudist on the exposed surfaces. Ignoring the others, he strode across to Dol Bonner’s chair, stood there, and said with feeling:
    “
Nor frighted at the tigress and her claws
,
Nor yet the lioness with open jaws!
”
    He reached down and clutched Dol by her upper arms, lifted her clear of her chair, high above the